Assessment of brain activities using short-term gray matter changes

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K12970
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Developmental mechanisms and the body works
• Research Institution: Keio University
• Principal Investigator: KASUGA Shoko 慶應義塾大学, 理工学研究科(矢上), 助教 (70632529)
• Research Collaborator: KABURAKI YUJI 慶應義塾大学, 理工学部 ; USHIBA JUNICHI 慶應義塾大学, 理工学部, 准教授 (00383985)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 運動学習 / 磁気共鳴画像法 / Voxel-based morphometry / 灰白質 / 上肢リーチング / 眼球運動

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We aimed at investigating validity of a novel functional assessment protocol of brain activity associated with motor tasks, which uses brain structural information acquired by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Structural brain images obtained by MRI after an eye- or wrist-movement task was analyzed by Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) to quantify changes in local gray matter volumes. We compared brain regions showing significant gray matter changes with regions showing brain activity during the motor tasks, the latter of which was obtained by functional MRI (fMRI). The regions detected in VBM was partially overlapped with those detected in fMRI, suggesting that short-term gray matter change reflect functional brain activity in the corresponding region in multiple kinds of motor tasks. The current results indicate that VBM can be used as a functional assessment of brain activity.

Free Research Field

神経科学